Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Wonkette had this clip on their blog site and the next day, referred to it, but emphasized the "Jew-liani" bit and then, out of the blue, referred too to something called the Jew York Times. I thought this was sliding too close to Judeophobia and blogged on it. Ken Layne of Wonkette then threatened me with legal action byreferring to lawyers, I refused to kuckle under and then he withdrew. Whole affair is here: http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2007/07/laffair-wonkette-round-up.html

The Israel Defense Forces is preparing to evacuate next week settlers who have broken into the wholesale market in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The IDF recently sent a letter to the settlers' attorney, Haim Cohen, saying it would charge settlers the cost of evacuating them if they did not leave of their own accord.

The letter, sent by the legal advisor of the Judea and Samaria Division, said that the settlers' window of opportunity to leave freely has closed, and that the IDF will forcibly evacuate them at a time it deems appropriate.

The army said in the letter to Cohen that it would use "reasonable force" during the evacuation, and raised the possibility of placing the entire cost of the exercise on the shoulders of Cohen's clients

The Anarchists Against the Fence demonstrate every Friday and the IDF and/or Border Guards expend tear gas, etc. There's a lot of money to be made there but have the Anarchists ever been threatened?

Whereas many modern Palestinian homes are built from cinderblocks, here there are opulent four-storey residences, many of them clad in marble.

With about a third of Palestinian households in the West Bank living in poverty according to the United Nations, Mazraa Sharqiya is an obvious exception to the rule.

Some Palestinians even refer to the village as the Miami of the West Bank on account of the wealth and the seemingly endless summer partying.

But the wealth found in Mazraa Sharqiya is not produced locally - it comes from the Palestinian diaspora, people who have left their homes in search of a better life.

About two-thirds of the village's 15,000 inhabitants live abroad, mainly in the United States.

During the summer, many of the residents return to their home village where they have built villas.

Ahmed Yacoub, 46, is one of them. The father-of-six left the village more than 30 years ago. He says that because of the Israeli occupation there were few opportunities for young people in the village.

Mr Yacoub first went to Puerto Rico, then Chicago, and then back to Puerto Rico where he runs a successful clothing company.

But he returns home every summer, although Israel often makes it difficult for him and his family to enter, he says.

"I like to bring my children here to teach them the Arabic language and customs," says Mr Yacoub, sitting on a chair on his patio.

"Because when they are far away then cannot learn like they do when they're in the village."

Until the early 1980s, Mazraa Sharqiya looked like any other Palestinian village in the West Bank during that period.

There were modest two-storey houses and many of the roads were unpaved.

But when expatriate Mazrawis began to find their feet abroad, the money started flowing in and the villas began going up. This has created what Mr Yacoub calls the "new town" and the "old town".

Despite being born and raised in the village, Mr Yacoub says that he often feels like an outsider.

"Some of the villagers see us as foreigners," he says. "I don't feel integrated with the rest of the village, the ones that never left."

In the summer, the village experiences a mini economic boom with the surge in population. It is not unusual to see lorries carrying luxurious, French-style, furniture crawling through the village.

Many expatriates get married in the village - and there can be as many as four weddings a day. One of Mr Yacoub's sons, Jomaa, 25, says that he is rarely in his bed before 0400. But in the winter, the village is ghostly quiet in comparison.

"The weather is very cold and most people are bored," says music-shop owner, Abdel Hakim, 28, who lives in the village all year round. "There is nothing to do."

At a local pool hall, some of the village's teenagers get in some practice. All say they would leave the village for United State if given the opportunity. "More money," says one teenage boy in broken English. And that is the dilemma that this village experiences.

Most of the expatriates say that they would like to live here permanently - but the Israeli occupation and the lack of opportunities make that difficult. It is only by their living abroad that Mazraa Sharqiya can continue to thrive.

This means that whenever other Arabs fight "Palestinians", the "Palestinian"Arabs are defined as Islamic militants, suggesting that they are legitimate targets but when Israel fights for its survival from genocidal "Palestinian" terrorists, the terrorists are then (all of a sudden) being coated with such plain titles as: "Palestinian people".

With The Jewish Revolution classical Zionism has found its true interpretation. In the highest tradition of the soldier-statesman, Dr. Israel Eldad advocates a form of Zionism that is unpopular in conventional society. He condemns“establishmentarian,” “social-club” Zionism as a belittling of Jewish history and a threat to Jewish lives. In its place, he calls for a revolutionary creed – one that dares assert its right to the Jewish homeland; not as defined by diplomats, politicians and Security Council Resolutions, but in biblical, historical terms.

He boldly declares that Jewish “diplomacy” failed to save millions of European Jews, and he accuses world leaders of inviting new Holocausts by denying history’s lessons and ignoring its imperatives. He warns the Jewish people that it can rely only on its own forces, and he offers a solution to the Arab problem in the Middle East.

The Jewish Revolution combines the passion of the patriot, the logic of the scholar and the sweep of the historian.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Scholar, writer and active Zionist revolutionary Israel Eldad was born in Galicia in 1910. After graduating from the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Poland to teach Jewish Studies at the Vilna Teachers’ Seminary. Invited by Menachem Begin, he joined the Warsaw leadership of B’rit Trumpeldor – “Betar” – the youth section of Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionist Party. In 1938 he first met Avraham Stern, founder of the underground Zionist movement Lohamei Heirut Israel, “The Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi” (the Stern Group).

Arriving in Palestine in 1941, he joined the underground as a member of Lehi Headquarters Staff. During the crucial years of World War II, when the British Mandatory Government was attempting to appease the Arabs by conducting a policy of repression against Palestine’s Jewish community, Eldad made secret broadcasts, wrote articles for underground publications and edited the Wall Newspaper – “illegal” bulletins pasted on the walls at night – since compiled in book form as Let the Walls Speak.

While attempting to escape arrest by the British police, Eldad suffered a serious back injury. For two years he remained in British prisons, his entire body encased in a cast. Dramatically freed from his military guards by Lehi comrades in 1946, he resumed his work in the underground movement until the establishment of the State of Israel. For many years he was editor of Sulam, a political and literary monthly recognized as the leading journal of its kind. He wrote Ma’aser Rishon (The First Tithe), which deals with the Hebrew underground movement and his part in it. He is the author of Hegyonot Mikrah, a highly original, challenging commentary on the Bible. For four years he edited the unique historical paper Chronicles – News of the Past. He translated from German into Hebrew the complete writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, published four volumes of selected papers and with his son Arieh wrote Jerusalem: The Challenge (1976).

Dr. Eldad was a Professor in Humanistic Studies at the Haifa Technion and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva. He died in 1996 and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Table of Contents *Introduction*An Existence of Nonconformity*The Fall of the Bastille*Sources of Zionism — Two Old and One New*New Zionism vs. the New Left, or the Joseph Complex*Zionism as Liberation, Revolution and Renaissance*Right, Necessary and Possible*The Zionist Front in Soviet Russia*Intermezzo, Rhapsody, Caesura*Eretz Yisrael or Palestine*The Arab-Jewish Conflict*Before Any Court of Justice*Jordan Is a River Not a State*Israel and Ishmael*Three Points of No Return and Three Stages of Salvation*Israel*Afterword by Arieh Eldad

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust StudiesNews Release: July 30, 2007170 RELATIVES OF RABBIS FROM 1943 MARCHURGE U.S. HOLOCAUST MUSEUM TO ADD MARCH TO EXHIBITS

WASHINGTON, D.C.- More than 170 children and grandchildren of rabbis who took part in the only march in Washington against the Holocaust, have petitioned the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to mention the march in its exhibits.

The march, by over 400 rabbis, took place on October 6, 1943, just three days before Yom Kippur. It was organized by the Bergson Group and the Vaad ha-Hatzala (an Orthodox rescue committee). The rabbis marched to the White House, hoping to ask President Franklin Roosevelt to help rescue Jews from Hitler--but FDR refused to meet with them, thereby igniting a public controversy.

The failure of the U.S. Holocaust Museum to include in its exhibits any mention of the Bergson Group or the rabbis’ march was the subject of another recent petition to the Museum, signed by more than 100 Holocaust scholars and Jewish leaders, urging the Museum to acknowledge the efforts of the Bergson activists.

...In recent months, there has been growing public interest in the work of the Bergson Group. U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said in a message to the Wyman Institute’s recent national conference that she is “deeply proud” that her father, then-Congressman Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. “actively supported the Bergson Group in its campaigns to save Jews from the Holocaust and help establish the State of Israel.”

Three months after dozens of prominent religious Zionist rabbis called for Jews to ascend the Temple Mount, the masses have not come - not even for Tisha B'Av

By Nadav Shragai

The hundreds of worshippers who came to the Western Wall plaza on the fast of Tisha B'Av to mourn the destruction of the Temple did not even look at the handful of Temple Mount Faithful who were quarreling loudly with policemen at the Mugrabi Gate. Gershon Salomon, the leader of the movement, once again wanted to pray on the mount, and the policemen, obeying the orders of the political leadership, once again prevented him from doing so. This ritual repeats itself on every holiday and special occasion.

But 10 days earlier, on the eve of the Rosh Hodesh (first day) of the Hebrew month Av, the police enthusiastically helped thousands of Jews encircle the Temple Mount gates. The participants represent a much broader section of the religious Jewish public than the Faithful. This group largely still obeys the rabbis who, for halakhic reasons, still forbid Jews from entering the Temple Mount, but nevertheless want to express a Jewish connection to the mount.

During this ceremony, which has taken place every Rosh Hodesh eve for six years, Jews circle the Temple Mount while singing, praying and blowing shofars and trumpets. They do this next to the gates of the mount, outside the walls, and inside the alleys of the Old City. The police allocate substantial manpower to safeguard this event, sometimes hundreds of policemen, but they do so gladly: Encircling the gates attracts a large religious Jewish population that otherwise would try to ascend the Temple Mount, if not for prayer - which the government has forbidden - then at least for a visit.

"The police," explains a senior police officer, "cannot and do not want to forbid Jews from visiting the Temple Mount. They have no problem with visits by tourists, hikers, 'ordinary Jews,' or the few religious Jews. What they fear most is the breaching of the halakhic prohibition that has prevented most of the religious public from ascending the mount since 1967."

The police are following the many halakhic rulings that have been published lately, which contravene the prohibition against ascending the mount. "I don't know how we'll handle thousands or even tens of thousands of religious Jews if they start coming to the mount every week," admits the senior officer. "We're afraid of what such mass visits, even if they are entirely innocent and not a form of protest, will do to the Temple Mount. We don't know how the Muslim public will react to a change in the human landscape there. We may soon have to deal with a major change. We won't be able to prevent it - the right to free access to the mount to members of all religions is anchored in the Protection of Holy Sites Law."

Three months ago, religious Zionist rabbis published a declaration breaking the 40-year-old halakhic taboo and allowed Jews to ascend the Temple Mount. The dozens of signatories included Rabbi Haim Druckman, head of the Bnei Akiva yeshivas; Tzefania Drori, the rabbi of Kiryat Shmona, and Avi Gisser, the rabbi of the settlement of Ofra.

These are members of religious Judaism's central stream. The halakhic ruling, which aroused fierce debate not only with the ultra-Orthodox but even within religious Zionism itself, has already led to change: Some days, hundreds of Jews come to visit the mount, in place of the dozens who came before the declaration.

Last Monday, for example, on the eve of Tisha B'Av, about 300 people came, including some of the rabbis who published the declaration and many of their students. The police divided them into five groups of 60, and attached police escorts to each group. The members of the Muslim Waqf looked on indifferently. It was on the Jewish side that riots almost broke out. One of the ultra-Orthodox worshippers at the Western Wall pointed at the sign that Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Western Wall rabbi, posted based on the instructions of the supreme ultra-Orthodox halakhic authority, prohibiting anyone from ascending the Temple Mount because of its sanctity. "Reform Jews," he hurled at religious Zionists waiting to enter.

This was another example of the profound debate between religious Zionists and ultra-Orthodox Zionists regarding the role of the State of Israel. But in spite of this debate, even after the religious Zionist rabbis' declaration, the most important national-religious poskim (arbiters of halakha) and the major ultra-Orthodox halakhic leaders agree that the prohibition against entering the Temple Mount should remain. Former chief rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu agree with this stance. Entering the Temple Mount "is a grave act liable to bring about the destruction rather than the building of the Temple," says Shapira, and "anyone who ascends the mount today is violating a prohibition whose punishment is karet" - death through divine intervention.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the greatest opponent of ascending the Temple Mount among the nationalist rabbis, even declared: "Regarding the Temple Mount, we are like Neturei Karta," an ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist sect. Meanwhile, the debate within religious Zionism has kept the rabbis' declaration from being published again, as opposed to the original plan.

The opposite approach, which led to the controversial halakhic ruling, considers sovereignty an essential tool to bring the Jewish people close to the Temple Mount again. According to this viewpoint, the de facto abandonment of the Temple Mount to the Muslims and the absence of a significant Jewish presence there is interpreted - even by part of the Jewish public - as surrender of the mount. The undermining of the symbols of Jewish identity on the Temple Mount, the ongoing destruction of antiquities, and Muslims' organized denial of the Jewish link to the Temple Mount and the Temple also led to the publication of the revolutionary halakhic ruling.

At the basis of the ruling forbidding entry to the mount lies the halakhic determination that all Jews are considered "tameh met" - impure because of contact with a Jewish corpse, even second- or third-hand. During Temple times, the ashes of a red heifer would be mixed with special water called "mei hatat." Several drops of this mixture was enough to purify a person. But for lack of ashes from the extinct red heifer, all Jews are considered tameh met, and therefore are forbidden to enter the Temple Mount.

Ostensibly, entry could be permitted to large parts of the present Temple Mount compound, since the Temple covered only a small percentage of it. However, since the precise boundaries of the Temple and the Holy of Holies inside it are not known, most of the poskim barred access to the entire compound, based on the rule of "mora mikdash" (awe of the Temple). In other words, anyone who does not fear treading on sacred ground while impure is violating a serious prohibition, even if it turns out that he tread only in places permitted.

The rabbis now permitting entry to the mount believe they can define precisely the areas where entry is permitted, mainly additions built during the time of King Herod.

Meanwhile, even after the publication of the declaration and the visits by the rabbis, the revolution has been delayed. "It's not a button that you press and everything changes," explains Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, a well-known religious Zionist rabbi. "For 40 years, the public has been hearing that approaching [the mount] is forbidden. Now they have to change diskettes, internalize, approach gradually. It's a process of awareness."

Until the public "changes diskettes," encircling the gates has been becoming very popular. On the eve of Rosh Hodesh Av, 5,000 people came. Even rabbis such as Eliyahu and Aviner, who forbid entry to the mount, participated, because they believe that by doing so they can reinforce the public's connection with the mount without transgressing the prohibition against entering it.

Boaz Yaakobi, the director of the encircling event, who himself does not refrain from ascending the mount, explains, "At every event, festival and special occasion, every Jewish person makes a blessing and hopes for the Temple to be rebuilt. This is not just a longing, but a desire by many generations to construct a real building where we offer sacrifices and eat parts of the meat as a mitzvah."

Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, the head of the Temple Institute, who also does not refrain from ascending the mount and participates in encircling the gates, published a manifesto on the eve of Tisha B'Av this year calling on people to arise and actually build the Temple. Ariel, questioning the seriousness of those who mourn the destruction of the Temple, he asked: "Is the Temple dead that we mourn it?

"From the day that the foot of an Israeli soldier tread on the Temple Mount," he says, "the Torah obligates every Jewish man and woman to arise and build a Temple. There is no mitzvah in the Torah 'to mourn the Temple.'"

Amman, July 28 (Petra)—The Royal Committee of Jerusalem Affairs has warned the Israeli authorities of implementing new projects in Jerusalem in the frame of its continued aggression against the city.

The committee stressed that these measures would not only hinder the peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis, but with the Arabs and all the Muslims.

The Commission, in a press release published today by its Secretary General Abdullah Kan'an, called on the Israeli government to take immediate action to stop these projects if it wants peace.

It also called on the Quartet envoy Tony Blair to request from Israel to stop these projects that threaten the foundations of peace between Arabs and Israelis, urging him to declare that the continued occupation of Jerusalem and the open assault on the holy sites will not facilitate his mission which he seeks to achieve.

Some of Israeli newspapers revealed the determination of the municipality of occupied Jerusalem to implement new projects in a series of attacks on the holy city and to resume tunneling bottom of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to deliver these tunnels to each other and have access to the bottom of the Dome of the Rock mosque and of Al Aqsa Mosque.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

In America, the hot Jewish feminism story is Elizabeth Rosner. Here's her Forward article, entitled: Everything I Know About Being Bad I Learned in Hebrew School.

And also, Jewess blog has an interview with Ellen Sussman who is the author of the novel On a Night Like This and the upcoming Dirty Words: The Unabridged Encyclopedia of Sex, which will be published by Bloomsbury in late 2008 and more recently, the editor of the new book Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave, a collection of essays about the many ways in which women can be bad or can be considered bad by others.

Once upon a time, she was the life and soul of the party – free and easy, up for anything. Some of her friends miss this old Reva, she says. Then she swung to the other extreme, the equivalent perhaps of running off to a convent, immersing herself in the highly regulated life of an ultra-orthodox Jewish wife. She lived in a religious enclave in Jerusalem, where married women wear wigs so nobody but their husbands can see their hair, and dress in long sleeves, high necklines and black tights, even in the heat of an Israeli summer. Where couples have sex at prescribed times of the month, and sleep in separate beds the rest of the time.

Then, feeling stifled, she threw off her sheitel and fled the house in tight jeans in search of hot, adulterous sex. Not long ago she might have been stoned for this. Finally, she says, she has found a better way, somewhere in between her two, radically different, former selves – “the sinful and the sacred, the religious and the profane”.

As she describes her zigzagging path between rampant drug-fuelled sex and intense religious devotion, she gives a fascinating insight into the usually cloistered world of ultra-orthodox Judaism. Some of the rules, taken to the nth degree, seem pedantic: the debate over whether or not you should tear toilet paper off the roll on the Sabbath, for example (you’re creating two halves on what’s supposed to be a day of rest). Or having to let a rabbi inspect her underwear to decide whether or not her discharge was clear enough that she could be pronounced “clean”.

But it would be wrong to imagine Reva has turned her back on her religion. “I’m passionately Jewish. I love Torah [the code of Jewish law].” She adores her faith, talks about it movingly as if it too were a lover. Some of the rituals she describes, such as taking a mikveh, or purifying bath, to be ready for sex with her husband after menstruating, are strangely beautiful. “When you’ve got your period, your body is in a state of not being able to create,” she explains. “That makes you impure, although it’s a terrible translation – the Hebrew word doesn’t have a negative connotation. So we separate. Then we purify ourselves in the mikveh, which is like a rebirth. You come out in a state where you can conceive, in your ultimate feminine state.” In “impurity” they don’t touch at all. It sounds drastic, but it works for hundreds of thousands of couples, she says. When they come together again it’s a real event.

Isser Yehuda Unterman, Israel's second Ashkenazi Chief Rabbil, was born in 1886 in Brest-Litovsk (Brisk), where his father was a teacher. Among Unterman's ancestors were Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller (1579-1654), author of the Mishnah commentary, Tosefot Yom Tov, and Rabbi Shaul Wahl Katzenellenbogen (1540-1616), about whom the legend says that he was elected King of Poland for one day.

After his marriage, Unterman continued his studies at the Kollel of the Volozhin Yeshiva, where he was ordained. At the age of 24, he opened and headed a Yeshiva in the neighbouring town of Vishova, Lithuania, which was so successful that the Hafetz Chaim sent one of his nephews to study there.

In 1924, Unterman was chosen to be Rabbi of Liverpool. In 1946, Unterman was elected Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Yafo...In 1964, Rabbi Unterman was appointed Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel.

Reva Unterman, originally from London now lives in Israel. Both her father and grandfather were internationally respected orthodox rabbis. She is currently working on a novel set against a backdrop of Halachic and Midrashic sources.

I have nothing against gays, but Jerusalem is the Holy City and we don’t need to exacerbate the friction between religious and secular by exhibiting publicly what can stay well-hidden between the bed sheets.

Well, if the book reflects her life's reality, none of her sheets seem to have been well-hidden.===============

Repute usually rolls off a person's tongue as "ill-repute". Otherwise, it would be reutation. The two operations the article refers to were ones of bravery and courage under fire with losses of troops. So why use "repute"?

Sherwin T. Wine, 79, a rabbi who spent his life forsaking convention as the leader of a sect of Judaism that viewed the religion as a culture instead of a faith, died July 21 in an automobile accident in Essaouira, Morocco, according to the Web site of the Society for Humanistic Judaism.

I think it remarkable that the Rabbi's humanism was so pronounced and emphasized. According to that news report, "Rabbi Wine, who lived in Birmingham, Mich., was on vacation with his partner, Richard McMains, when another vehicle hit the taxi in which they were passengers."

This is our home. Exactly as it is yours. Your Noble Sanctuary is our Har Habayit, the Mountain of our Home, the very center of Judaism for 3,000 years. It is that very compound that is our home, not that vestige below it, that souvenir, that Western Wall, that mere retaining buttress, that you watch us visit as you stand above us. Our home is that home, and you are occupying it. You are occupying the most sacred ground we have.

Secular, religious, exiled to six continents, we have carried the rusted key to that Home wherever we have gone. If you can't see it, it's because we carry it in our bones, our memory, our hearts, the darkness in our souls.

Belittle this at your peril. Deny this to your detriment. This is what you need to know about the right of return, ours as well as yours, and about holy men, ours as well as yours: There is no knowable justice in this world. Not for you, and not for us. Keep the right of return where it belongs. It is a part of you. But it is not a part of this world.

Her husband Yossi had a different take on the subject. "I have an idea for a start-up," he told me. "Catering for shivahs. Think about it," he enthused, as if this were his last chance to take life by the balls. "A brit mila or wedding is great, mazel tov, but with all due respect, we're talking only one evening. With a shivah, you close a deal for seven whole days, from morning till night, and no one's going to complain about the food. The close family is grieving too much to feel how anything tastes, and the guests won't feel comfortable complaining. Even you," he shot a look at my husband, whose favorite sport is sending back dishes at restaurants. "You're not about to go to Assaf and say: 'I'm sorry that your father died, but the asparagus stalks were too stringy.'"

For seven weeks now, up to 6,000 Palestinians trying to return to their homes in the Gaza Strip have been stranded in Egypt, objects of a political struggle between the Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah involving Israel and Egypt.

But there finally appears to be a deal, opposed by Hamas, to let them return, beginning with about 100 on Sunday, with more to follow during the week, Palestinian, Egyptian and Israeli officials said Saturday.

Israel is only marginally involved because of its security concerns over who gets in and all it wants is the names so they can be checked.

But, if Hamas is opposed, and Hamas rules Gaza, how can there be a deal?

As one would expect of letters written during college, Ms. Rodham’s letters display an evolution in sophistication, viewpoint and intellectual focus. One existential theme that recurs throughout is that Ms. Rodham views herself as an “actor,” meaning a student activist committed to a life of civic action, which she contrasts with Mr. Peavoy, who, in her view, is more of an outside critic, or “reactor.”

“Are you satisfied with the part you have cast yourself in?” she asks Mr. Peavoy in April 1966. “It seems that you have decided to become a reactor rather than actor — everything around will determine your life.”

She is mildly patronizing if not scornful, as she encourages her friend to “try-out” for life. She quotes from “Doctor Zhivago,” “Man is born to live, not prepare for life,” and signs the letter “Me” (“the world’s saddest word,” she adds parenthetically).

Ms. Rodham becomes expansive and wistful when discussing the nature of leadership and public service, and how the validation of serving others can be a substitute for self-directed wisdom. “If people react to you in the role of answer bestower then quite possibly you are,” she writes in a letter postmarked Nov. 15, 1967, and continues in this vein for another page before changing the subject to what Mr. Peavoy plans to do the following weekend.

Here's David Wilder's letter protesting factual innacuracies and misinterpetations in a Washington Post article on Hebron. It is followed by the one correction, out of 22, the WashPost included on its site as well as the original WashPost story.

Considering the Post's reputation, I was quite surprised by the number of factual errors in the above article, not to mention the immense bias portrayed in the feature.

1. "Within Hebron, the separation is enforced not only by Israeli barriers but also by military checkpoints and curfews…"There has not been a curfew in Hebron in years.2. "Securing the small Jewish minority has a potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs,"Exactly 10 years ago Hebron was divided into two zones. In an official agreement with Arafat, Israel transferred over 80% of Hebron to The Palestinian Authority. There is no proof of the number of Arabs who live in Hebron, but for the sake of argument, should there really be 150,000, ten years ago at least 130,000 came under the sole control of the P.A. Presently, the number of Arabs in P.A. controlled Hebron would be in the vicinity of 90%. Where then does Israel's presence in less than 10% of the city have a 'potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs?'3. "In recent months, the Israeli army has helped the Hebron settlers expand eastward to a hilltop home near the settlement of Kiryat Arba…"The Hebron Jewish community purchased a 35,000 square foot building for over $700,000. The Israeli military had nothing to do with the purchase and did not 'help the Hebron settlers expand.' They fulfill their function by offering the necessary protection at the site, as the military does throughout Israel. There are no restrictions on Arabs living in the vicinity of the building.4. "There is no future for Arabs and Jews together in Hebron," said Noam Federman, 37, a settler from Beit Hadassah"Noam Federman never lived in Beit Hadassah. He and his family have lived in Kiryat Arba for the past year and a half. His statements do not represent anyone or anything except his own personal views.5. "… Behind him trailed a small group of men and boys, who at Shuyukhi's instruction were attempting to defy the enforced division of their city that has virtually emptied its most important historic, religious and commercial areas of Palestinians."a) According to the Hebron accords, the entire city is supposed to be open to both Jews/Israelis and Arabs. However, Jews are forbidden from entering the "Arab/Palestinian" side of the city, whereas Arabs are permitted to enter the Israeli-controlled side of the city.b) As above, virtually all of the commercial areas of Arab Hebron are located within the area controlled by the P.A. This is not cut off from the Arabs. In addition, no Arabs have been forced to leave their homes, or move out of the Israeli-controlled side of the city.6. "The post bars Palestinians from entering Shuhada Street, a once-thriving commercial strip closed by the Israeli military more than a decade ago to protect the two Jewish settlements and a yeshiva along its route. The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $2 million in 1997 to renovate the street as part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to reopen it for Palestinians. But Israel has since refused to do so."a) The area closed off to Arab traffic is approximately two blocks long. Alternate routes have been provided. This, in comparison to 80% of the city, closed off to Jews.b) It is not true that Israel refused to open the street. It was open to vehicular and foot traffic following completion of the construction by US AID. However, the Israel Defense Forces demanded it be closed following the outbreak of the second intifada in October, 2000, when Hebron Arabs began shooting at Jews from the surrounding hills, hills which had been transferred to the Palestinian Authority as part of the Hebron Accords.7. "…there are 100 Israeli-constructed fences, gates, concrete barriers and military checkpoints within the roughly one-square-mile historic center."These fences and barriers have been constructed to prevent infiltration of terrorists and to prevent easy escape routes for terrorists following perpetration of terror attacks.8. "… The area included the Jewish Quarter until 1929, when Arabs killed more than 60 Jews living there. The survivors fled."In 1929, 67 Jews were raped, tortured and killed by their next door neighbors. Seventy were wounded. The survivors did not flee. They were expelled by the British. A group returned in 1931 and remained until 1936 when again they were expelled due to Arab inciting.9. "Hemmed in and harassed, the Palestinians are fleeing today. Nearly half the homes in and around the Israeli-controlled Old City of Hebron have been vacated, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recently reported."a) Who is hemmed in and harassed? Arab terrorists shot at Jews for two years, killing and wounding. Dozens of Israelis have been killed in and around Hebron since the signing of the Oslo Accords.b) B'Tselem is a radical left wing organization, whose facts and statistics are very much in question.10. "The Ibrahimi Mosque is ours, not theirs."The 'Ibrahimi Mosque' – otherwise known as "Ma'arat HaMachpela," the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, is the second holiest site to Jews in the world. The site was off-limits to Jews and Christians for 700 years – from 1267-1967. This despite its sanctity to Jews, and despite the fact that the building above the caves was built by Herod some 2,000 years ago, six hundred years prior to Muhammad's birth. Since Israel's return to Hebron in 1967 the site has been accessible to all people of all faiths. However, Moslems refuse to accept freedom of worship, claim that it's a mosque and declare that should they ever again control the site, it will be off-limits to anyone not Moslem. (The site, nor the city of Hebron is mentioned anywhere in the Koran.)11. "The 50-yard walkway took months to complete because each night the bricks were uprooted. It opened this year."The walkway has been used by Arabs for years. A sidewalk was paved last year.12. " During the three-month period ending Jan. 31, the observer group received 35 complaints of settler violence and harassment, ranging from beatings to throwing debris. Over the next three months, 71 cases were reported. "The pattern you see is that you have settlement and then violence around it," Lignell said. "And you see this project inching forward.""a) TIPH – Temporary International Presence in Hebron – is supposed to be an observer force. What is the legitimacy of "received complaints?" Such 'complaints' may, or may not be true. An 'observer force' is supposed to do just that – observe – and not base conclusions around 'complaints received' which have no proof backing them up.TIPH is an extremely anti-Semitic organization, made up primarily of Scandinavian human rights workers, who know virtually nothing about the Jewish history and tradition of Hebron, and who are notorious for one-sided 'observations.'b) According to recent reports issued by the IDF and the police there has been a tremendous decrease of violence by Israelis in Hebron over the past year, with very few cases being brought to the attention of the police.13. "Palestinian patrons, who have watched anxiously as the settlement project recently swelled beyond the city center under the protection of Israel's military, whose strategic goals frequently coincide with the settlers'."a) Foreign governments, primarily Germany, France and Spain, have invested huge amounts of money in various parts of Hebron, including the Casba. Why is it legitimate for Arabs to renovate property, yet when Jews do such it is deemed illegitimate? Why can Arabs build, buy and sell, while the same activity by Jews is considered negative?b) The IDF does not and never has been involved with 'strategic planning' with civilians in Hebron. The military is under the direct rule of the Defense Department, i.e. the Defense Minister, the Prime Minister and the Israeli government. There are times when our aims coincide but also many times when they clash.14. "The town is divided, it is deserted, and in many ways like a prison for us," said Khaled Osaily,"As written earlier, 80% of Hebron is under total PA control. The entire city was open until beginning of the second intifada, during which time a homicide bomber exploded and killed a couple from nearby Kiryat Arba.15. "David Wilder, originally from New Jersey, is the spokesman for the Hebron settlers. He largely dismissed public relations until Goldstein opened fire."This is totally inaccurate. I began working for the Hebron Jewish Community in an administrative capacity in May of 1994 and did not begin work as a spokesman for about 2 years following that, with the advent of the Hebron Accords. My employment had nothing to do with Baruch Goldstein.16. "Wilder, who like many settlers here wears a pistol on his hip,…"This is true. We are licensed to carry a weapon for reasons of self-defense. I have never needed to use it, thank G-d. I know people who are alive today because they had a weapon.17. (He) does not agree with what he calls the Israeli military's "concept of using walls as a means of security, of building barriers and saying, 'Now you are safe.'"The problem here is not so much that people can't make a living; it's a political one," Wilder said. "The Arabs want a presence here. If they have it, they own it, de facto. And if not, they don't."These two paragraphs are total non-sequiturs, making no sense in the context of the article. It is clear that they were inserted: 1) to include a Hebron representative in the article, and 2) to make me look foolish and unintelligent.18. " On a hilltop less than a mile's trip along streets secured by Israeli soldiers sits a four-story house, which a group of settlers occupied the evening of March 19."This building was not 'occupied,' rather it was purchased for over $700,000. Why, when an Israeli purchases property he is an 'occupier' but when an Arab buys property and moves in, his is a legal resident?19. " the military government in the occupied territories, contends that the settlers did not arrange for the permits Israelis need to buy and move into property in the West Bank."1) Why does the Washington Post use language 'the occupied territories' as opposed to Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank?2) The permits were requested and denied for political reasons, not for any legal reason. The entire transaction will be proven to be legal and legitimate.20. "…and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the caves beneath the Ibrahimi Mosque."Why is the site called the "Ibrahami Mosque?" Why isn't it written that there are also a number of synagogues in the building, which again, was not built by Herod as a mosque?21. "We don't know the people who come and go from there," said Jabari, 22, a bespectacled middle school chemistry teacher. "We try to stay inside now as much as possible."Arabs in the neighborhood continue to walk the streets freely. They are not restricted in any way, and no incidents initiated by Jews have been reported in the area since Hebron residents moved in.22. "One tried to snatch a soldier's gun, Israeli military officials said, and the officer opened fire."The article concludes with such a sorrowful scene. However, would it have ended the same way had the Arab been able to take the soldier's gun and open fire on the Israelis at the scene? When you play with fire, you get burned.This article does not attempt, in any way, to portray an accurate portrait of life in Hebron. It clearly portrays the Arabs as the oppressed and the Jews as the oppressors; the Arabs as the victims and the Jews as the culprits.Within the article on the Washington Post web site are three featured videos: One with the Arab mayor of Hebron, one calling for expulsion of Jews from Hebron, and one featuring an extreme left-wing Israeli. Why aren't their three videos featuring Hebron Jewish residents?A graphic map of Hebron – "Detailed map of Hebron and area surrounding shows locations of checkpoints, roadblocks and settlements.," is totally inaccurate, making it look as if almost all of Hebron is under Israeli rule. This is misleading and false, being that an overwhelming majority of Hebron is under the rule of the P.A.It is unfortunate that the Washington Post should see fit to print Wilson's shabby, one-sided, biased piece of yellow journalism.

A July 26 Page One article about the tension between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron incorrectly said settler spokesman David Wilder largely dismissed public relations until a 1994 shooting. It was the Hebron settlers generally who did not embrace public relations until that event; Wilder did not become spokesman until two years later.

In Divided Hebron, a Shared DespairPalestinians and Jewish Settlers in West Bank City Struggle for Existence

HEBRON, West Bank -- The barrier Israel is constructing in the largely rural West Bank is effectively separating Arab from Jew along much of its 456-mile length. But the broader project of disentangling the two peoples in the absence of a peace agreement is failing in urban areas such as Hebron, where the most radical elements of Islamic and Jewish nationalism are gaining strength.

Within Hebron, the separation is enforced not only by Israeli barriers but also by military checkpoints and curfews intended to protect the roughly 700 Jewish settlers living within the city's most historic and religiously important areas. Securing the small Jewish minority has a potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs, who voted last year to fill all nine of the district's parliamentary seats with candidates from the armed Islamic movement Hamas.

This city, set among prolific vineyards, was among the first destinations for Jewish settlers following the 1967 Middle East war, when the Israeli military occupied the West Bank. Fired by a four-millennia-old religious claim to Hebron, the settler enterprise here is among the most ideologically determined in the territories. Its expansionist goals clash with Palestinian secular and Islamic armed movements, whose own nationalist passions helped turn Hebron into one of the most violent venues of the Palestinian uprisings.

In recent months, the Israeli army has helped the Hebron settlers expand eastward to a hilltop home near the settlement of Kiryat Arba, a large step in their plan to connect the two areas. An international observer mission here, established after 1996 accords that left part of the city under Israeli military control and placed the other under the Palestinian Authority, reports sharply rising violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinians.

"There is no future for Arabs and Jews together in Hebron," said Noam Federman, 37, a settler from Beit Hadassah in the Israeli-controlled city center here. "And Hebron has always been a Jewish city."

Jamal Maraga's Palestinian fabrics shop sits along an alley in Hebron's casbah, lit by shafts of sunlight that filter through bricks, bottles and trash suspended in fencing laced over the walkway. The Jewish settlement of Avraham Avinu is housed in a multistory building that towers overhead.

International observers here say the settlers regularly toss debris and dirty water into the Arab market below, now largely shuttered in a city where unemployment stands at 60 percent. Asked whether Arabs and Jews can share Hebron, Maraga, his hair and beard a gray fuzz, looked up at the chain-link canopy.

"Impossible," he said.

Proximity and Violence

Just before noon on a recent day, Azmi Shuyukhi, the graying leader of the Palestinian Popular Committees, a civil-resistance organization, approached an Israeli military checkpoint. Behind him trailed a small group of men and boys, who at Shuyukhi's instruction were attempting to defy the enforced division of their city that has virtually emptied its most important historic, religious and commercial areas of Palestinians.

The post bars Palestinians from entering Shuhada Street, a once-thriving commercial strip closed by the Israeli military more than a decade ago to protect the two Jewish settlements and a yeshiva along its route. The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $2 million in 1997 to renovate the street as part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to reopen it for Palestinians. But Israel has since refused to do so.

The order to close the road was one of several that began the separation process here in 1994 after an Israeli from Kiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Palestinians praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque just past the end of Shuhada Street. The site is sacred to Muslims and Jews, who believe Abraham, Isaac and other biblical figures are buried in grottos beneath it.

According to the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, the unarmed observer mission, there are 100 Israeli-constructed fences, gates, concrete barriers and military checkpoints within the roughly one-square-mile historic center. The area included the Jewish Quarter until 1929, when Arabs killed more than 60 Jews living there. The survivors fled.

Hemmed in and harassed, the Palestinians are fleeing today. Nearly half the homes in and around the Israeli-controlled Old City of Hebron have been vacated, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recently reported. The group also said that more than three-quarters of the Palestinian shops and restaurants in the casbah and adjacent commercial districts have been shuttered, many by military order.

Shuyukhi's band had failed to make it past the checkpoint for 15 consecutive weeks. But this day, the soldiers waved them into the Israeli-controlled area. After several moments of bewilderment, Shuyukhi started down the empty street -- shops closed, no cars, men and boys with Palestinian flags following behind.

As they approached Beit Hadassah, a Jewish settlement of about 30 families, army jeeps roared up. Soldiers in helmets and body armor, joined by a few Israeli police officers, ordered Shuyukhi's group to lower the Palestinian national flag they carried and turn back.

"We will not take it down," Shuyukhi shouted. "The Ibrahimi Mosque is ours, not theirs."

Suddenly, an older settler rushed from the entrance of Beit Hadassah, clutching a walkie-talkie in one hand.

"Grab the flag, grab the flag," he shouted in American-accented Hebrew.

A policeman blocked him. But the man spun from his grip and, like a determined running back, plowed toward the Palestinians.

"Go take care of the Arabs, the criminals," he shouted at the police, who led him struggling away.

Mats Lignell, a former Swedish soldier with the observer mission in Hebron, watched the scene before heading to a raised path across Shuhada Street, which his mission financed so Palestinian students could reach their Cordoba School without passing near Beit Hadassah.

The 50-yard walkway took months to complete because each night the bricks were uprooted. It opened this year.

During the three-month period ending Jan. 31, the observer group received 35 complaints of settler violence and harassment, ranging from beatings to throwing debris. Over the next three months, 71 cases were reported.

"The pattern you see is that you have settlement and then violence around it," Lignell said. "And you see this project inching forward."

A Chain of Settlements

On a recent morning, a dozen toddlers zipped around Avraham Avinu's shady courtyard, where in 2001 a Palestinian sniper's bullet killed 10-month-old Shalhevet Pas. A nearby market, once the main Palestinian clearinghouse for vegetables, has been named for her by the settlers who control it.

The Jewish settlement is separated -- by a wall, razor wire and a worldview -- from Hebron's casbah and its Palestinian patrons, who have watched anxiously as the settlement project recently swelled beyond the city center under the protection of Israel's military, whose strategic goals frequently coincide with the settlers'.

"The town is divided, it is deserted, and in many ways like a prison for us," said Khaled Osaily, Hebron's appointed mayor from the secular Fatah movement. Most of the more than 1,800 closed Palestinian businesses in the Old City area shut down since the second Palestinian uprising began in the fall of 2000.

David Wilder, originally from New Jersey, is the spokesman for the Hebron settlers. He largely dismissed public relations until Goldstein opened fire. The government of Yitzhak Rabin considered evacuating the settlers but instead imposed the military curfews and closures on the Palestinians.

Wilder, who like many settlers here wears a pistol on his hip, does not agree with what he calls the Israeli military's "concept of using walls as a means of security, of building barriers and saying, 'Now you are safe.'

"The problem here is not so much that people can't make a living; it's a political one," Wilder said. "The Arabs want a presence here. If they have it, they own it, de facto. And if not, they don't."

On a hilltop less than a mile's trip along streets secured by Israeli soldiers sits a four-story house, which a group of settlers occupied the evening of March 19. Lignell and his observer team arrived less than an hour later. By then, dozens of soldiers had surrounded the home to protect its new residents.

Kiryat Arba, a settlement of about 7,000 people, sits just across a narrow valley. Wilder, 53, said the property represents a key link in the chain the settlers are trying to establish between the urban settlements of Hebron and Kiryat Arba. His daughter's family is one of 15 moving into the house.

Wilder said the settlers bought the home for $700,000, some of it donated by American supporters. But Israel's Civil Administration, the military government in the occupied territories, contends that the settlers did not arrange for the permits Israelis need to buy and move into property in the West Bank.

"These people think they can do what they want and then we will have to adopt their decision," said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's Coordinator of Activities in the Territories. "This is not the case."

As a military court considers their appeal, the settlers are renovating the building. New plaster walls partition off a series of family apartments, their doors still sawed-out holes covered by hanging blankets. Soldiers wander the airy halls.

The house overlooks the main roads leading from Kiryat Arba to the downtown settlements and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the caves beneath the Ibrahimi Mosque. The army used to set up a temporary post at the house on the Jewish Sabbath. Now, having set up a more permanent rooftop position, the army supports the settlers' right to stay.

"This building will show us whether there is a right for a Jew to buy a house in Hebron," said Baruch Marzel, a Hebron settler who has established a 70-student yeshiva in the home. "Or will Hebron be the only place in the world a Jew is not allowed to do so?"

'After All That . . .'

Mohammed al-Jabari looks out from his home, across a courtyard of grapevines and olive trees, to the army post on the roof of the settlers' new acquisition. On this day, he is waiting for a funeral, vivid evidence that separating Jews and Arabs here does not guarantee security for either.

"We don't know the people who come and go from there," said Jabari, 22, a bespectacled middle school chemistry teacher. "We try to stay inside now as much as possible."

A few hours later, in the adjacent cemetery, dozens of men gathered beneath cypresses and pines to escape the sun. Yehiya al-Jabari, a 67-year-old shepherd from Hebron and a distant relative of the teacher's, would soon be buried.

About 1 a.m. that day, Israeli soldiers had entered Yehiya al-Jabari's home looking for his 18-year-old son, Saleh. Seeing the soldiers come in, the men and women of the family accosted them. One tried to snatch a soldier's gun, Israeli military officials said, and the officer opened fire.

One shot struck Jabari's wife, Fatmeh, in the neck. The next hit Yehiya, who also dropped to the floor. An Israeli medic administered CPR to Fatmeh, reviving her, but Yehiya died in his living room.

Men and boys bore Yehiya's wooden stretcher up the hill, pausing to allow mourners to kiss his face. Some held Hamas flags, and the angry chants celebrating martyrdom carried down to the soldiers at the settlers' new home. Then, after tipping the body into the dry ground, the men wandered back down the hill into the divided city.

According to reports, the man had in his possession two pipe bombs and two improvised grenades. IDF sappers destroyed the devices in controlled explosions.

The Palestinian was transferred to security forces for further interrogation.

And to be very clear, they can observe the soldiers' behavior and report them for abuses. I'm all for that. Security concerns aren't a license to be bad. But to yell at the soldiers as they do and try ti actually interfere in their work is being, how did I say? Yes, nasty.

Gundaker Commercial Group and J2K Development are partnering on a $140 million residential and retail project in booming Shiloh, Ill. Gundaker Commercial is joining several other St. Louis developers that have targeted Green Mount Road in Belleville and Shiloh, including THF Realty and The Jones Co.

J2K Development, based in Waterloo, expects to close in August on the purchase of 172 acres of farmland at Green Mount Road and Shiloh Station West for an undisclosed amount from Carl Tempel Sr. The project, The Villages at Wingate, will have 268 single-family homes and villas, 96 senior-living apartments, 75,000 square feet of retail space and 60,000 square feet of office space. The site is located about four miles south of Interstate 64 in St. Clair County.

We recently heard from Yisrael Medad, the Israeli editor of the Jewish blog that Wonkette editor Ken Layne threatened a libel lawsuit against. We asked Medad why he thinks Layne wrote to him in the first place.

Medad’s response:

Truth, I don’t know but:

a) He could have been having a bad day and then this “little guy” comes along and tweaks him. after all, he’s probably famous in Washington.

b) Maybe he’s done this before and I’m the only one with the cajones to have stood up.

c) Maybe he doesn’t realize the “Jew York Times” is a redux of 1984 Hymietown.

d) Maybe, just maybe, he’s a closet antisemite himself; Okay, let’s just say drawing-room Judeophobe to use the Continental phrase, and he thought that I really did know that he was sliding into antisemitism - I think he’s the one who posted it actually - and so he swung out. Maybe he thinks Jews think money and lawyers means money, so I would back off. I’m not rich, so it doesn’t bother me. I knew I was right.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

"It is utterly devastating to realize how [ill]-equipped mentally and politically Israel's current leadership is in facing the challenges to Israel's existence, security and Zionist ethos," said Yisrael Medad, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Shilo[h] and a volunteer spokesman for the Jewish communities there. Since 1992, Israel has been going in the wrong direction -yielding territory, granting the Palestinians a form of self-rule and arming thePalestinians, Medad said in a telephone interview on Friday. Israel needs to be firm with the Palestinians and tell them no terror. Maybe they can have some kind of autonomy now, and maybe sometime in the future when they've stopped killing themselves and everyone else, they can talk about more, he said. For the past 80 years, the Palestinian national movement has been at odds with the Jewish national movement - Zionism, said Medad. "The way out is certainly not yielding territory and pampering a people that continuously violate every agreement you've signed with them."

French judges placed former prime minister Dominique de Villepin under formal investigation on Friday for his role in an alleged plot to smear Nicolas Sarkozy and damage his chances of winning the presidency.

He said he would cooperate fully but said he had no involvement in the scandal in which Sarkozy's name appeared on a faked list of accounts purportedly held at Luxembourg-based securities clearing house Clearstream.

The flap over the introduction of the term "nakba" into 3rd grade history books (by the way, this in itself is amazing for me. most Israeli high school pupils I meet seem to know only 3rd grade history so maybe there's hope here for improvement) is not the term itself (althoug I will admit that it has taken on a life of its own besides its regular meaning) but what you teach about it.

...it is important that Israeli Arab children learn real historical facts, not just propaganda designed to foster hatred and rejection of the state in which they live. The way to do this, we would suggest, is not necessarily to reject all use of the term "nakba," but to define it more accurately.

The Arab catastrophe was not the fact of Israel's creation, but the Arab rejection of it. If the Arab world had accepted the UN partition plan and decided to live in peace with Israel, both Israel and Palestine would be celebrating their 60th anniversaries next year. All the wars and the refugee problem would not exist, and the unfathomable price imposed in blood and treasure for the failed Arab attempt to destroy Israel would have been saved.

Muhammad Dahlan, the former strongman of Gaza who was among those blamed for Fatah’s stinging military defeat there last month, resigned Thursday as national security adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The resignation was little more than a formality, because Mr. Abbas issued a decree dissolving his national security council immediately after the Hamas takeover of Gaza five weeks ago.

An official in Mr. Abbas’s office, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution, said that he did not understand why Mr. Dahlan sent the letter of resignation now, but that the president accepted it anyway.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

The 12th day of the Hebrew month of Av, which falls this year on Friday July 27, marks the 60th anniversary of the execution by the British authorities in Palestine of three members of the Irgun underground - Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss, and Meir Nakar. This column is dedicated to their everlasting memory.

As 1947 dawned, the more judicious counsels in Whitehall cautioned that the death knell of Britain's 30-year rule of Palestine was within earshot. "The sands of time are running out," warned the British high commissioner. But most in Whitehall were either blind or hard of hearing. Some even asserted that the existing political order in the Holy Land was established by the Almighty and, therefore, eternal.

Had they given the matter deeper thought they might have foreseen the inevitable. But thinking ahead is given to statesmen and chess players, not to autocrats and bureaucrats, and certainly not to a man of such anti-Semitic bent Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary of the day, who famously warned the Jews "not to push to the head of the queue" in their demand for the imperative opening of Palestine's gates.

LED BY Menachem Begin, the Irgun revolt against the British hardened. The governing authorities, driven by an irresistible hubris of self-interest and colonial blindness, and embracing the delusion of decaying imperialists in every age that punitive brutality will cow the rebels into giving up their resistance, began sentencing captured Irgun fighters to the most severe forms of capital punishment: flogging for relatively minor offenses, and hanging for relatively major ones.

The executions were frequently carried out in the Acre fortress, a Crusader citadel restored by the Turks and considered impregnable. In May 1947, in what was probably the Irgun's most daring exploit, a wall of this great bastion was breached, allowing for a mass escape. Three of the attacking party - Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss, and Meir Nakar - were captured, tried and condemned to death.

ON THE DAY of the execution, July 29 1947, the district commissioner of Galilee visited the Acre prison accompanied by the commissioner of prisons, to ensure the gallows were readied and all other necessary arrangements in place.

It would be wrong to think of these men as in any way vindictive or malevolent. They were, as we shall see, British bureaucrats doing their job. Their writ did not extend to pondering the iniquity of destroying healthy, conscious men or the unspeakable wrongness of cutting lives short when they were in full tide; or meditating on the significance of pulling a lever, causing a living person to drop through a hole, neck broken, rope twisting on itself, the body slowly revolving. Their task was to see to the formalities and the practicalities of the hangings, aware that if anything went wrong their superiors would wring their necks.

So imagine their astonishment when, upon their calling on the Acre prison superintendent at his quarters, he told them in no uncertain terms that he would not carry out the executions.

WHAT TRANSPIRED subsequent to that was meticulously documented in a number of top-secret and confidential reports to the higher authorities, quoting what each of these officials said and did on that day. Their names and functions were: Mr. Thorne - district commissioner of Galilee, Mr. Hackett - commissioner of prisons, and Mr. Charlton - superintendent of the Acre jail.

The following is a redaction of their exchange:

Charlton [prison superintendent]: I suppose you know that I am not going to carry out these executions.

Hackett [commissioner of prisons]: You are the officer detailed to carry them out. I have here the warrants.

Charlton: I do not agree with the policy of Government regarding these hangings. The whole thing stinks. Why can't Government carry out the executions in a normal manner, giving the prisoners and relatives proper warning as usual? I want no part of it. I am unhappy about the whole affair. Please send me home. I've had enough of this.

Hackett: Do you absolutely refuse to carry out the death sentences?

Charlton: Yes. I have carried out 44 executions during my service in this country and I have not raised any objections before. But now I'm adamant. I had a definite promise from Mr. Bromfield when he was acting Commissioner of Prisons that secret executions such as that carried out in the hanging of Dov Gruner [a prominent Irgun commander] will under no circumstances occur again. I will not preside under the circumstances you have outlined. I am ready to execute the men on Friday of this week [August 1] or next Tuesday [August 5] provided the proper open procedures are followed, meaning that the date is announced in advance and that the relatives are given the opportunity to visit the condemned men prior to the event.

Hackett: But the lawyer of the accused and their relatives will be informed prior to the event.

Charlton: I am not satisfied. Why can't Government carry out the executions in a normal manner, giving the prisoners and their relatives proper advance warning, as is usual procedure? The whole prison will be upset. It will be impossible for me to keep order or discipline if the executions are performed in a secretive manner. I am not going to carry out these executions, not because I am afraid, but solely because it is against my conscience. If the executions are postponed as I suggest, and done later in a proper and regular manner, I will certainly do as ordered.

Thorne [district commissioner of Galilee] to Hackett: The time now is 4.15 p.m. The intention to execute the three men will be made public in an hour-and-three-quarters, at 6 p.m. By that time the relatives will have been informed in Jerusalem. [To Charlton]: Unless you have someone else to carry out the executions, someone whom you can rely upon, we have to inform Government what is happening. I need hardly point out the political and other consequences if the executions are postponed because an Officer of the Crown refused to carry them out.

Charlton: I'm expecting Mr. Clow [superintendent of the Nablus jail] at five o'clock, and I'll ask him if he will carry out the executions. I cannot guarantee that he will.

Thorne: Under the circumstances, and in view of the fact that Clow may not get here in time, and given the importance of the time factor, I'm going to Haifa immediately and inform Government of the situation. [Haifa was the nearest place with a secure telephone line].

LATER, THORNE phoned Hackett from Haifa:

Thorne: Government confirms the executions must go forward as arranged. If Charlton still refuses to carry them out, either you or Clow must do so under all circumstances. Even if Charlton has a change of heart, he has become so excited he won't be in a fit state to carry them out, so there is no use in pressing the matter further.

At 5.30 p.m. Clow, the superintendent of the Nablus prison, arrived at Acre.

Hackett by phone to Thorne: Clow is here. He will carry out the executions if that's Government's final instruction. He is pressing for a postponement, though.

Thorne: A postponement is out of the question. The executions must be carried out as ordered. You have confirmed that the warrant is made out to "the superintendent of Acre prison" [and not to Charlton by name]. So I have relieved Mr. Charlton of that post and have appointed Mr. Clow as superintendent in his stead.

Hackett to Thorne [at midnight]: The tensions have relaxed. There will be no hitch in the executions.

AND, INDEED, there was none: Avshalom Haviv was hung at four in the morning, Meir Nakar at 4.25, and Yaakov Weiss at 5.00.

No one in the Acre jail slept that night. One prisoner, whose Irgun name was Natan but whose real name was Chaim Wasserman, was in a nearby cell, and he smuggled out a letter to Irgun commander Menachem Begin, describing what he saw and heard. He wrote:

"Early this morning our three comrades went heroically to the gallows. We were already aware of what was going to happen between four and five in the morning, and pressed against the bars with bated breath watching helplessly what was going on around the cell. The prison superintendent, Major Charlton, had left the place yesterday afternoon and was not seen again. Toward evening a party of hangmen arrived.

"The officers went in and informed the condemned men they were to be executed between four and five in the morning. Their reply was to sing "Hatikva" and other songs in powerful voices. They then shouted to us that the hangings would begin at four o'clock, in this order: Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, Yaakov Weiss. They added: 'Avenge our blood! Avenge our blood!'

"We shouted back, 'Be strong! We are with you, and thousands of Jewish youth are with you in spirit.' They replied, 'Thanks,' and went on singing.

"At two a Sephardi rabbi whom we could not recognize from afar [it was Rabbi Nissim Ohana] was brought and stayed in the cell 15 minutes.

"At four in the morning Avshalom began singing "Hatikva," and we joined in loudly, pressing against the bars. At once armed police came up to the visitors' fence near our cell. At 4.03 Avshalom was hanged. At 4.25 we were shaken by the powerful singing of Meir. Hardly able to breathe, we nevertheless joined in. He was hanged at 4.28. At five o'clock the voice of Yaakov, this time alone, penetrated our cell, singing "Hatikva." Again we joined in. Two minutes later he was hanged. Each of the bodies was left hanging 20 minutes before being carried off, one by one.

"The chief hangmen were Hackett, inspector of prisons, and Clow, superintendent of the Nablus jail.

"At dawn we informed the prison officers through an Arab warder that we would not be responsible for the life of any Englishman who dared enter the jail yard. We declared a fast and prayed. Later in the morning we found the following inscription on the wall of the cell of the condemned: 'They will not frighten the Hebrew youth in the Homeland with their hangings. Thousands will follow in our footsteps.' Next to it was the Irgun insignia and their three names in the order they were executed."

About Me

American born, my wife and I moved to Israel in 1970. We have lived at Shiloh together with our family since 1981. I was in the Betar youth movement in the US and UK. I have worked as a political aide to Members of Knesset and a Minister during 1981-1994, lectured at the Academy for National Studies 1977-1994, was director of Israel's Media Watch 1995-2000 and currently, I work at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. I was a guest media columnist on media affairs for The Jerusalem Post, op-ed contributor to various journals and for six years had a weekly media show on Arutz 7 radio. I serve as an unofficial spokesperson for the Jewish Communities in Judea & Samaria.